The prior art is replete with various electronic systems that generate, collect, and process sensor data. In this context, a specific class of sensor devices may provide digital output information that represents a measurable quantity, element, or phenomena. For example, such a sensor may output data which is inherently digital—such as an event counting sensor—or may have analogue-to-digital electronics integrated into the sensor package—such as a modern MEMS microphone. A digital sensor device may be configured to measure any of the following, without limitation: electromagnetic energy; fluid flow rate; sound; radio frequency interference; air pressure; temperature; airspeed; and the like. The small dimensions of modern digital sensors has also enabled for the first time, high spatial resolution measurements using an array of many closely-spaced sensors to generate a spatio-temporal image or mapping of the measured quantity, rather than just sample point measurements.
Applications with a large number of individual sensors will require many wiring connections, and sensor arrays operating at high sample rates will produce a large amount of sensor data. Conventional approaches related to sensor data processing perform signal processing, signal conditioning, and/or data processing on the raw sensor data before the sensor data is stored in memory. Although this approach may be suitable for low speed applications or systems that only have a low number of sensor devices, it may not be viable for other applications. For high channel count array measurements, it is preferred to avoid any signal conditioning or pre-processing which may degrade the inherent dynamic range, inherent signal-to-noise and inherent phase matching of the array sensors, when recording the data. It is also preferred to avoid a large number of wiring connections to external signal processing or signal recording devices, that would make the array non-compact and restrict its use.
Accordingly, it is desirable to have an improved system that can handle large amounts of sensor data in a compact and efficient manner. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.